Rethinking cultural and political nationalism

Abstract

This paper addresses the distinction between cultural and political (or civic) nationalism. The idea of an apolitical cultural nationalism can be traced at least as far back as the German historian Friedrich Meinecke's work in the early twentieth century. In the 1940s, Hans Kohn overlaid this cultural–political divide with an East–West divide, and in the 1970s, John Plamenatz cemented this typology in political studies with his article on “Two Types of Nationalism.” Despite various amendments since then, this divide still informs debates in political theory so that civic nationalism remains privileged as the only appropriate form of nationalism. Yet the political equality associated with civic nationalism has been premised on a false assumption of cultural homogeneity with deleterious effects for minority cultures. I argue that historically behind the ideological mask that civic nationalism is non-cultural and benign, it has always had a cultural agenda at its core.